Worked that job from age 16 until my first internship between junior and senior years of undergrad. I stocked produce. The hours were long and the pay sucked (min wage was $4.10 when I started, I think I finished at $7.50 or so in '97), but it was good exposure to the real world and real people. I think many teenagers, no matter what decade/generation, live in this protective bubble and have no concept how much a certain job will pay them, how much things cost, or how tough it can be to work a manual labor job for 60 hours a week, etc.

They were some interesting people; we had our fair share of dumbasses for sure, but we had some smart, hard-working people there as well that came from Pontiac (store's in Waterford) and just weren't given the opportunity to go to U-M like I was. I really learned to appreciate my education.

I'm not a big beer person at all, my cousin and good friend drinks Miller Lite, which is not bad. He has some beer snob lawyer friends that always bring an assortment with them and turn their noses up at Miller Lite, and give the ol' "taste this, it's so much better than that horse piss you're drinking now!" Many of the beers are so bitter I imagine straight caustic soda would taste better. I don't get it. Drinking beer should not be an endurance contest.

OSU had a #1 ranked guy that absolutely destroyed some Iowa dude, getting a takedown 2 secs into the match and just toying with back points until he finished him off 16-1 at the beginning of the 2nd period. I think the Iowa dude had a bunch of upset wins to make the final, but still, it's amazing to see such a dominant performance in the conference final.

First -- There's a Nebraska fan with courtside seats dressed as a ref which has confused me a few times. Pretty annoying and what happens if you get a whole row of people dressed as refs? Where does this slippery slope end?

Second -- Petteway got his 2nd foul with 9 mins to go in the first. Never sat on the bench, still only has two fouls with 3 mins to go. Has scored six since the 2nd foul.

wow MSU is such a train wreck at the end of games. All of this in the final minute

1. Can't shoot free throws, Costello misses two to keep the game at 3

2. Almost fouled a guy shooting a 3 (which would be the 2nd time they did that -- the Minny guy made the 3 to tie that game), correctly called as non-shooting, but still, they just lucked into that foul when it should have been obvious to foul up 3 with under 8 secs to go. IU makes both FTs.

3. MSU misses the 2nd FT at the other end and Valentine fouls with MSU up 2. Izzo has heart attack on the floor. Farrell misses the 2nd FT

4. Shooting FTs at the other end with ~1 secs to go, MSU guy misses the first and makes the 2nd, so IU can still throw up a halfcourt prayer -- if he misses the 2nd, the game's over.

before losing to a 26-4 Wisconsin team. That was after beating Minnesota in the final game of the regular season. So they won four in a row, which they hadn't done the entire season, even in non-conference. They finished 16-19 and still didn't make the NIT.

It has duct tape underneath the inner headband because the back of the brim started wearing through it. That hat saw a LOT of days. Too many days, really, because I really started looking like a dirtbag when I wore it to class. Oh well.

Personally, although I would never wear one, I do respect the blue hairs that bust out the U-M Tam o' Shanter. Rock on, blue hairs, just don't tell me to down in front....at halftime.

I had Illinois friends at the time, and oh God, that single play was the whole reason their team fell apart that year and it was the greatest travesty in sports history. Illinois fans have an incredible hatred toward Michigan, probably since the '89 final four game, and that call put more fuel on the fire for them.

In 2002. Replay reviews didn't start until 2005. I was at that ND game, and of course ND stadium was in the stone age with incandescent light bulb scoreboard and absolutely no in-stadium replay whatsoever (based on the ND boards I read and the fervent opposition to Jumbotrons, I assume they're still in the stone age). I'm surprised they didn't have an analog clock and a guy changing the scores by hand.

That phantom TD was at the complete other end of the field from where I was sitting so I had no idea that anything controversial had even happened. After the game, I regrouped with my tailgate friends that had tickets at that end of the field and they were all up-in-arms about it. I've never seen a replay of that play.

1. 5-0 Purdue. I didn't get past halftime of this game. Just not worth it. I had a raincoat over basically a light fall coat, but no gloves, so my hands went numb sometime in the 2nd quarter.

2. Home game against BC in '96. This was still the "I have no idea how to dress for games" phase of undergrad for me. 75 degrees or so before the game, huge cold front comes through with rain and the temp drops into the low 60s. I was in a T-shirt and shorts soaking wet. Not good times.

3. Fricking Utah game this year. Good lord the water. Didn't get a dry pair of socks until 10 pm when I got home. I'll have to remember to bring some spare socks and shoes if rain is expected.

At the time, I thought the people that badgered the TAs during office hours were just looking to get their hands held so they didn't have to put in any effort (I was very stubborn then). But there are going to be homework problems that you simply cannot do. I think it's a sick joke by the professors -- "hey, let's throw this stupid problem at them and see how long they bang their heads against a wall before they give up." It's just not worth the frustration.

The classes are pretty similar to how it was when I went there (undergrad was '99). Many of the ol' professors are either retired or getting close to it, so there's a lot of new blood there. Fogler is still there from my understanding -- teaches 344 and his book is used by most schools. Good guy, very demanding class. He's getting up there in years, though, so I don't know if he'll teach it much anymore. The term with 344 and 360 at the same time was the hardest for me and you'll want to have the other two courses be fluff if you can.

Take MSE 250 for the material science requirement. Great course. Not hard and you learn a lot. It's good to see they made a mat sci requirement because pretty much everybody took MSE 250 for engineering elective anyway.

The schedule also looks really light on chemistry. We were required to take Chem 302. Think about taking 302 or p-chem. They're not easy courses, but it's your money and you might as well use it on a useful course instead of some weird thing (I took astro 101 and accounting for free electives, for instance). If you have any thoughts of grad school, I would definitely consider more chemistry.

I wish him good luck -- any engineering is a demanding degree. Tell him he should try to be social and don't brute force it by himself like I did. Meeting study partners is key and he shouldn't feel like office hours are a crutch for stupid people. I met very few people, never went to office hours, and it made homework and studying take forever. It took me so long that I started to run out of hours in the day to finish things. I would pull all-nighters on Friday. I should have swallowed my pride and realized I couldn't (and shouldn't) do everything by myself.

I think it was a 32-man bracket with the finals on the lounge big screen. I got knocked out in the 2nd round. The winner was a guy that used to do time trials all day and would reset if every turn wasn't pixel perfect (he ended up dropping out because of the game). That game was a great community builder, even for someone like me that didn't play it much.

the Ole Miss 0 being in the same column as the TCU 2 is driving me crazy. If you're going to stack numbers on top of each other, at least have the ones column line up and tens column line up. Just simple, basic shit with the way numbers are supposed to be presented.